


moondust

by laehys



Series: eyes full of stars [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, Minor Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Qian Kun, Non-Binary Liu Yang Yang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29843817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laehys/pseuds/laehys
Summary: Traveling through space is a lonely thing — and Ten knows everything about loneliness.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten & Liu Yang Yang
Series: eyes full of stars [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140218
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	moondust

**Author's Note:**

> part 3!  
> it'll probably make more sense if you read _[wild stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28855332)_ and _[to taste the moonlight on your lips](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28957158)_ first <3
> 
> **warning** : mentions of anxiety and substance/alcohol use

_“Did you know that the temperature there stays around the same during the entire year?”_

Ten grunts to demonstrate he’s listening, but he has his eyes closed and his feet up on the panel control, his hands behind his head. “Cool.”

_“Exactly. It doesn’t get that cool, but also not that warm. One could even call it the perfect temperature.”_

The voice sounds small, coming from a single speaker in the panel control. Ten can’t wait until he gets to a planet so he can fix his AI and make them as big and as powerful as they once were. Even though Yangyang knew how to get on his nerves and drive him crazy, they were a big help in controlling the ship and were essential in the long run. Ten could deal with things for a little while by himself, but he needed Yangyang more than he ever realized, even though Yangyang sometimes could be obnoxious as _hell_ — just like now.

_“This is the perfect season to plant new seeds so they can grow and flourish later. An extra helping hand would definitely be appreciated.”_

“Well,” Ten replies, nonchalantly, “then they better build some kind of robot to get the extra help.”

_“Your knowledge on the area could help them a lot. Maybe you could advise them.”_

Ten opens his eyes just to roll them, being careful to keep his voice as neutral as possible. “Maybe _you_ could advise them on that.”

Though Yangyang had no access to cameras nor could they see him, Ten knows that Yangyang had their ways of getting information — voice modulation and speech patterns being only some of them.

_“You’re the one with the experience as an engineer and of building something from scratch. I think you’re the better option here.”_

“Shut up,” Ten says. “I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.” He rubs his forehead hard, scrunching up his nose. One thing is to talk and bicker with Yangyang when he could see an image of them or feel their presence around the spaceship, but another is to talk directly to a speaker and hope the connection hasn't been cut short again.

Besides, talking about feelings out loud when he’s sober and not touch-starved and desperate for something isn’t really his style.

_“Maybe they’d make you sit down on a table and talk about your feelings instead of running away from them. I think that talking and reflecting on your thoughts and what you feel could be very healthy.”_

“Well, sucks that _you_ can’t do this, huh.”

Ten regrets saying that just as it finishes leaving his mouth, his eyes widening as his brain realizes what he just said. He sits straight on the chair, feet touching the ground, but Yangyang’s silence is enough for Ten to know that he crossed a line. Again.

"Yangyang… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say it like that…"

He only receives silence as his answer and Ten sighs. He fucked up and made Yangyang shut down again.

Time passes even slower when you're alone in a spaceship traveling through space and there's no one to keep you company. Without any help from holograms or images, it's hard for Ten to read Yangyang's expressions and try to discern where the limits are, what he can do to fix the situation. There’s nothing to give him a hint, only the old speaker staring back at him, so Ten decides to leave Yangyang to come back when they decide to, not forcing them to accept his apology and entertain him.

Ten manages to find inside one of the overflowing drawers next to his workbench an old sketchbook he used to draw in. Before, when he was young and had free time, he'd draw and dream of prototypes, ideas, things he could build and create. Some of them had become reality while others had got lost in the way, the ideas evolving into something else, but the drawings contained in those pages were a glimpse inside the mind of a younger Ten — one full of dreams and aspirations.

Flipping to the back of the sketchbook and finding a blank page, Ten starts to sketch random shapes and lines, just to get familiar with the motions.

To fall back into the zone and just keep drawing is easier than what he imagined it would be; to just keep pulling memories from inside his brain, the things that weigh heavily on his mind, and transfer them all to paper. The charcoal smudges the palm of his hands and it’s a welcome distraction from drawing against bright screens and reflective surfaces. A nice change. 

When he finishes his sketches, he looks down at it for a while, his eyes trailing down the random lines that had slowly become the shape of familiar flowers, a scenery that had been marked inside his own brain and now was part of the yellowed pages of his sketchbook. He didn't want to think about that — about how his hands had automatically drawn that when his mind had been somewhere far away.

He didn't want to think about it _at all._

The sight of the drawing tugs at his heartstrings and creates a space for longing to bury itself right inside his chest. It's weird to keep thinking of a place that he’d already left behind. To keep dreaming and imagining things.

He’d visited lots of places before, met people, and always left right after. He never took something with him — and he didn't this time too, but Ten can't help the feeling that he might have left something behind. Something he shouldn’t have.

It’s not love. Love was a word too strong and that was reserved for very special things. Instead, Ten knows — he fucking _knows_ , even though he tries hard not to think about it — that infatuation might be more accurate. Curiosity. It’s only natural for one to have some kind of connection with the people who had taken care of him for so long, who had welcomed him with open arms in their home and had done anything they could to ensure he’d be healthy again.

They didn’t ask or beg him to stay behind like some of the one night stands he’d had before. They simply had let him go to do what he wanted to while saying that he could come back later. That he’d be welcome.

They let him go and be free and that made him want to come back more than anything just to be sure if they’d be waiting for him or not.

🚀

Yangyang comes back sometime later, but Ten isn’t really sure how much time had passed. When he finally lands on a planet that he’s sure would have something to help him, the first thing he does is to repair and fix the systems on his ship, bringing Yangyang back to his full potential.

A few days of hard work are needed to make sure that LYY001010 is back and in control of everything, but Ten feel the exhaustion leave his body when the screens flicker back to life and a pleasant hum takes over the interior of the ship, Yangyang’s voice coming from what seemed like everywhere at once.

“ _It’s good to be back_ ,” they say. One screen quickly maps the route Ten took when he left the pink planet behind until it got to where they were currently in. _“Now I can finally see your face when I judge you for your stupid decisions.”_

Ten snorts and rolls his eyes, but there’s a smile that tugs at the corner of his lips. He’d missed them a lot more he even thought it could be possible. Speaking with Yangyang only through a speaker wasn’t the same thing as _this_.

“I don’t get what you’re talking about,” Ten mutters, tucking away some of the wires and screwing the front of the panels, getting up from the floor after. His back cracks and hurts when he stretches, having been in that position for too long, but the end result makes it all worth it. Every second he spends perfecting his ship is worth it.

 _“Of course you don’t,”_ Yangyang says. It shouldn’t be possible for an AI to be so damn ironic and sarcastic, but Ten had learned a long time ago that Yangyang was too special. Unique. And would never fit the molds of what was right or wrong. _“You never know when it’s to call you out.”_

Ten chuckles and shrugs. “I guess…”

Even with Yangyang’s return to the spaceship, Ten can’t help but feel like there’s an itch he can’t soothe. It makes him restless, jittery. It makes him too aware of the fact things weren’t like this _before_ —

—before bright lights and colorful explosions in the corner of his eyes, before Yangyang vanishing and becoming unresponsive, before _pain pain pain_ until it had been taken care of, before a strange little planet tucked away in the corner of the universe.

Before everything.

And even with Yangyang fighting against what an AI was supposed to do and creating something for themself, becoming bigger than a system and protocols, and keeping him company among the stars, traveling through space is a lonely thing — and Ten knows everything about loneliness.

He’s been born and raised in it, his veins flowing with blood and the aching for something akin to home. A person. A place. Something that could become his safe space.

Yangyang had watched him struggle with it and search for a place among crumpled bedsheets and soft hands, landing on a violet surface and waiting for the feeling of belonging somewhere to rise on his chest, but it always ended with rushed departures and new plans being created soon after.

He’s not particularly in a gloomy mood when Yangyang’s voice echoes through the spaceship, the voice gentle and low bringing Ten back from somewhere far away inside his mind and making him stop the fiddling in his hands, putting down the screwdriver and a piece of metal.

“ _I can create a route to that place quicker than you can imagine_.”

They don’t need to specify where _that place_ is. By now, Ten had been subjected to lots of talks like that, all trying to initiate a healthy discussion that Ten had no interest in joining in. Staying away and locking things inside his brain was the safest move.

“I know. But I don't want to.”

There’s silence for a moment, only the hum of the motors and engines in the background. Ten sighs and chucks the piece of metal inside a box of other scrapped parts, putting away his screwdriver.

“ _You don't want to or are you afraid of what might happen? Of what you can’t control?_ ”

Ten huffs. If he doesn’t think about something, it automatically makes it not real inside his own little bubble and place. But it’s hard not to think about something that is constantly being brought up — and even then, it swirls around Ten’s mind too much for him not to think about possibilities when he’s all alone.

It’s not always Yangyang’s fault — he’s prey to his own thoughts.

And there’s a little voice inside his brain that whispers “ _What if you had stayed?_ ”. He wouldn’t have stayed per se for he needed to fix Yangyang and fulfill his promise to them, but the chance of _staying_ was a recurrent topic in his dreams.

And these days, Ten tried not to sleep too much.

“I don't need to answer to you,” Ten ends up replying, scrunching up his nose. “You’re the one who needs to answer to me. _God_ , your seller told me you were such a nice and obedient system. He was _so wrong._ ”

Yangyang doesn’t laugh, but Ten can imagine that it would be something they’d be doing if they had a body and were right in front of him. The voice that comes after is light and only makes him believe that even more, “ _Maybe you should have looked better into my protocols and fixed some things, but it’s too late now for that_.”

“Yeah, I _wish_ I could play around with your code but why do I feel like you’d still find a way to lock any changes I made and delete them?” He chuckles a little, shaking his head.

“ _I can’t answer about that, but I_ can _say that it would take only a few days for us to go_ —”

“New route,” Ten says, cutting them off. He closes his eyes for a moment, pursing his lips. “Let’s go to a new place far away from here. I think we need a change of scenery.”

“ _Ten_ —”

“Please, make the calculations necessary for a new direction right now.” 

There’s silence for a second before Yangyang replies, “ _Route redirected._ ”

🚀

“ _You’re going to crash and burn. And you’re going to bring me down with you. At least give me a fucking body so I can go away before you manage to destroy yourself and your spaceship.”_

Ten doesn’t give Yangyang the benefit of receiving an answer, locking himself inside the escape pod. He won’t leave, not really. He wouldn’t leave Yangyang behind even if he was mad and entirely furious, but the escape pod is the only place Yangyang doesn’t have access to and sometimes Ten only needs some _goddamn silence_.

His hands shake and his throat is too dry. He’s not coping well, even if he tries to pretend otherwise. He is _not_ dealing well with things and even though he tries to suppress any thoughts with drinks and other substances, even if he tries his best to wipe his memory and just keep going, he fucking _can’t._

It’s fucking unfair how he’s doing what he loves the most, how he’s traveling around but he can’t be fucking satisfied with it, and it just makes his chest hurt and tears spring up to his eyes. _It’s not fucking fair._

Why must things be like this now? Why have they had to change? He wishes he could go back in time and re-do everything; he wishes that traveling around could bring him the same happiness it did before, the same sense of fulfillment, but there’s no way he can lie to himself when he can’t even fucking sleep at night because he gets plagued with dreams from his traitorous mind.

They were just two men on a small planet. They have each other and they don’t fucking _care_ about him. Ten knows he just needs to get that inside his own brain so he can move on, that he shouldn’t meddle in a place where he’s not welcome. He _knows_ that.

His entire life has been about getting somewhere, meeting people, and leaving after.

And that's how it always should be.

🚀

They’re filling up the spaceship in a small asteroid. They’ve been low on fuel for a while, but Ten tried to press on just a little bit before finally stopping before it was too late. These days, he finds himself not wanting to stop as much as he’d do before.

And Yangyang, of course, seems to be able to read his thoughts and catch _exactly_ on that.

_“It should take a few more hours before they finish loading up everything you need and refueling. You can still go out before they finish.”_

Ten knows that. Before, even a twenty-minute walk around a new place would have him already by the door, ready to tackle a new place and a new culture.

He shrugs. “Okay.”

For a few minutes, Yangyang doesn’t talk. Ten stares hard at the ceiling in his bedroom, eyes following the pattern of wires that hang out from a hole he still needs to fix.

“ _Aren't you… going out?_ ”

“No.”

“ _Why not?_ ”

“I don’t want to.”

“ _You know, we need to talk about—”_

Ten sits up on the bed, staring hard at the walls. All the emotions inside of him are bubbling up and threatening to explode from his body, on the verge of having a breakdown. “I don’t want to talk! _You_ want to talk! And _you_ are the one always making me think about feelings and things I don’t want to think about!” He snarls, voice echoing inside the small space of his bedroom. “I don’t want to do this!”

“ _It’s because I care about you!”_ Yangyang’s voice comes out just as harsh and frantic as Ten’s, hitting the walls and bouncing back to hit Ten square into the middle of his chest, knocking the breath out of him. “ _You might think I don’t, but I do! I do! And I want what’s the best for you! You… you came back so much better, Ten. You can’t see it, but I saw you, and your time there did so good for you…”_

His throat hurts and his eyes well up with tears. Ten can only wrap his arms around himself and hug a pillow to his chest. And though Yangyang’s voice might have gotten a calmer edge to it, there’s no one around him to hug him or give him any kind of comfort, to hold his hand and tell him that everything would be okay.

“I can’t go back,” he cries out, body trembling. “I don’t know what I’d do if they rejected me. I don’t know and I don’t want to find out!”

His eyes sting and the back of his throat burns. There are a million things running inside his mind and all of them make his brain ache.

“ _Can you live carrying this question with you? Forever wondering about how things could have been?_ ”

“I’ll learn to deal with this—”

“ _Will you?_ ”

He can’t say “ _Yes, I will_ ” when they both it’s not the truth. He’d stay wondering and it would haunt him forever. Just how he’s dealing with things now is enough proof of how it would end up turning up to be like.

“It sounds so fucking unreal. We don’t even _know_ each other. This… this wouldn’t work, listen to me Yangyang, this would just—”

“ _You keep drawing them from memory. You talk about how Doyoung would bring you to the garden and show you around. You talk about how Kun would sneak you out of the house because you were bored but not healed yet. You taught me their names. You drew them for me. You care—even if you don't want to admit that, you_ care.”

His voice comes out softer this time, too low. “They have a history together.”

“ _And you can build some history with them too._ ”

🚀

They travel together exploring corners of the universe and discovering secrets hidden underneath moondust and sparks left from the stars, but Ten feels deep inside of him that something must change.

Though he laughs and jokes around with Yangyang, though they live and have adventures together, trying to enjoy everything around them, there’s one thing that weighs heavily on Ten’s mind.

It doesn’t need to be directly addressed because it’s clear by the mood that surrounds him sometime, the melancholic feeling that settles into his chest and fills his eyes with uncertainty and makes his hand twitch. More than accepting what he needs to do, Ten tries to come to terms with the fact Yangyang had been right and he can’t go on without something else.

Without closure.

Rejection is something he’s already very familiar with, it’s something he tasted since birth and has become a familiar friend — it wouldn’t be different this time. It would still hurt and be painful, Ten doesn’t doubt that, but he’d survive like he always did.

Going back to that little planet is scary and terrifying, anxiety running through his veins, but Ten feels the need to have something final and certain. To be sure of where he stands, of everything around him and _them_. Even if he's wrong, even if he was overthinking and imagining everything, he wants an answer.

The air inside the spaceship is recycled, but Ten can feel the change approaching from the corner and settling in, making a space for itself and becoming impossible larger with every passing day, the weight of his decision growing with every breath he takes.

Ten has one promise to fulfill before he can take the journey that will decide his destiny, so he drums his fingers against the control panel, looking down at the dozen of different buttons and the bright screen that waits for the new route to be inserted.

“So, I did promise you a body, didn’t I?” Ten asks softly, voice nothing more than a whisper. Ten would like nothing more than to have Yangyang’s support throughout the entire process, but that was not part of Yangyang's path. They had different dreams and aspirations — and Ten would give them whatever they wanted if he could. “That was your last wish before we parted ways, wasn’t it?”

There’s only pure silence before an electronic chirp sounds out. It carries with itself joy and hope for the future, and though Ten was filled with bittersweetness and apprehension, he couldn’t help but smile a little, fingers brushing against the control panel.

“I’ll make your wish come true and then I’ll go on my own way. Maybe we’ll find each other again sometime in the future.”

“ _Not even a billion stars could keep us apart. I’m sure we’ll meet again, Ten.”_

**Author's Note:**

> [ [twt](https://twitter.com/pinkhrj) | [ccat](https://curiouscat.me/rensungie) ]


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